In Crimea today, Ukrainian culture is an unwanted stepdaughter: there are no books in Ukrainian in most shops, and even when there are a few left, people are wary of selling them. Ukrainian theatre workshops are being closed down on flimsy pretexts and radio stations try to avoid playing Ukrainian music. Only the people who travel back and forth to the mainland make any difference.
“You won’t find a thing: it’s a dead loss,” warned a Kyiv colleague who left Crimea after the “Russian Spring” of 2014. “Books in Ukrainian? They’ve all been thrown out.”
It’s hard to say where he got the story about the books, but it’s true that Ukrainian culture is hard to find in Crimea today.
